While residents await the next Boundary Flood Recovery update meeting, an update was released online last week, and we spoke to Recovery Manager Graham Watt.
He says they requested case managers back in July, and now have funding for a Wellness Program. “We did not have the capacity in our recovery to kind of be that ongoing support, and a Wednesday night public meeting isn’t the best place to be having that kind of support. So this program is just getting ramped up right now, there’s gonna be a total of 4 case managers working with Boundary Family Services, 2 of them will just be on for 6 months and the other 2 will be there for a year.”
Watt adds that with over 400 households initially affected they expected this to be a problem. Currently about 36 households don’t have adequate housing. However, Case managers should be available by early November to help individuals navigate physical and mental health challenges as well as supporting housing needs and similar issues. He says another huge win is that Emergency Management BC is supporting winter housing needs through funds for hotels, motels, and modular units if needed. The HEAP Program also saw an extension.
Graham Watt also says agriculture recovery is one of the largest immediate challenges. “Many millions of dollars of losses, along the river you can picture a rancher with alfalfa crops that got covered in 3 feet of sand and maybe all their irrigation infrastructure was wiped out, many wells and pumps, that kind of thing were lost in the flood. In other cases one of the large nurseries had their lower field entirely inundated.”
He explains that eligibility is a big problem. One example is if your farm is less than 50% of your income, Disaster Financial Assistance can’t help. A major announcement from Watt is that the recovery team has been invited to write a proposal for funding. Back in July an expression of interest was extended for provincial and federal financial support. This is the 2nd step in that process, making it some-what of a milestone. The Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Funds would largely pay for dikes, flood protection, storm drain improvements, and similar installments.
To visit the Recovery Team’s website click here.
